Field of the Invention
The present disclosure is generally directed to systems and methods for preparing and administering a prescribed fluidic pharmaceutical compound, such as a chemotherapy compound and, more specifically, to systems and methods that allow a physician to enter a prescription for a patient that is subsequently verified for accuracy, prepared based on computer-aided instruction, verified based on a measured weight, substantially automatically provided with visual documentation, and administered to a patient.
Description of Related Art
Many technical functions involving the preparation and distribution of drugs may be performed in a pharmacy by a pharmacy technician or licensed nurse. When a non-pharmacist performs such functions, a pharmacist must generally verify their work. Various systems have been developed that take images of the various steps of the preparation of a pharmaceutical compound by a non-pharmacist technician to allow a pharmacist to later review the preparation. Such systems typically require the technician to take some type of active step in order to capture an image of the drug preparation step. For instance, the user may be required to use a touch screen or foot pedal to trigger image capture.
However, since such systems require an active step by the non-pharmacist technician to capture the appropriate image, errors may occur that prevent the supervising pharmacist from properly verifying the prescription. In addition, such prior art systems do not include any other mechanism for verifying the prescription and rely solely on the images obtained during the preparation of the prescription for verification.
In addition, systems have also been developed that utilize gravimetric information, checked by a methodology, to confirm the proper drug concentration. However, there is not a current system that combines information from an image verification system and a gravimetric verification system to ensure that a drug has been appropriately compounded.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system that triggers an image capturing step when certain criteria of the drug preparation have been met and moves to the next step of the drug preparation without any additional user input. A further need exists for a system that displays both image information and gravimetric measurements obtained during drug preparation steps to a reviewing pharmacist in a clear and easily readable manner, such that the pharmacist can quickly approve or reject a particular drug preparation.